Abstract
AbstractWith the advent of climate change as a major challenge of our time, Earth system modeling has become highly policy‐relevant regulatory science. In this situation, the social mechanisms that play a role in any scientific endeavor become particularly exposed. By discussing historical, philosophical, and sociological (HPS) aspects of the field's current “cultures of prediction” together with the physical science community in a physical science journal, we aim to provide an entry point into HPS reasoning for climate scientists interested in reflecting on their field and science in general. This paper, first, introduces our perspective on “science as culture” and climate modeling as “regulatory science” and, second, highlights and connects relevant ideas from the three commentaries that follow it. In so doing, we hope to give a fuller picture of climate science, the interplay it engenders between HPS and the physical sciences, the distinctions that it gives rise to as compared to some of the more traditional, exact, sciences in which it is rooted and its place in society including its role in scientific policy advice.
Highlights
INTRODUCTION TOA SPECIAL SECTION10.1029/2020MS002139Special Section: Historical, Philosophical and Sociological Perspectives on Earth System Modeling
We hope to give a fuller picture of climate science, the interplay it engenders between HPS and the physical sciences, the distinctions that it gives rise to as compared to some of the more traditional, exact, sciences in which it is rooted and its place in society including its role in scientific policy advice
The answer given was that the aim of this conceptual consideration was to make the audience think about how “the climate problem” looks different from different positions and places in society and what “solving the climate problem” in our multiperspective society might mean, for instance, by which metric(s) one would measure its “solution”? This answer may not sit especially with junior scientists who have been socialized in a society in which “evidence‐based” decision‐making is a major quality seal and in which political appeals to “global solutions to climate change” oftentimes ignore social heterogeneity
Summary
Special Section: Historical, Philosophical and Sociological Perspectives on Earth System Modeling.
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